by Katie Ruggle
Everyone looked at Felicity, who simply said, “Agreed. Mom’s out of the house, even after she gets herself out of her current situation.”
Despite the horrendous day she’d just had, Molly felt a slight easing of the tension banded around her lungs, making it easier to breathe. “Good. That’s decided, at least. Now let’s talk about work.” Picking up the folders, she waved them at her sisters. “Until we get reimbursed by the bank, things are going to be tight. The more skips we can bring in, the less ramen we’ll be eating.”
“Do we need to reconsider taking Barney’s job?” Cara asked with a preemptive wince.
Without having to consider the question, Molly immediately nixed it. “Tracking Sonny? Nope. We’re not that desperate yet.”
“Sonny?” Norah repeated, her eyebrows drawn together in confusion.
“Edison Zarver.” Just saying the name made Molly’s stomach twist. She’d only met him in person once at the courthouse, but his soulless eyes had left a definite impression—and not a positive one. “He skipped, so Barney’s trying to convince us to track him down.”
“Ugh.” Charlie’s screwed-up face showed exactly how she felt about Sonny. “I’d rather eat ramen every day than get mixed up in Zarver’s slimy business.”
“That’s basically what Cara told Barney when he called.”
Her eyebrows shooting up, Charlie stared at her twin, looking impressed. “Really? You said that?”
Always meticulously honest, Cara rolled her eyes. “Not really.”
“Pretty close.” Molly refocused on what they’d been talking about before they’d gone off on their Sonny tangent. “Anyway, it’s a no to Sonny, but all of these are yeses.” She held up the folders and extended them toward her sisters. Felicity and Charlie each immediately took one, and Norah extended her hand but didn’t touch the folders as she looked at Molly, her expression anxious.
“Do I need to help out more on the actual bounty-hunting front?” she asked, her tone telling Molly how very unappealing she found that thought.
“Thank you,” Molly told her sincerely, giving her arm a squeeze, “but you stick with research and fixing our tech.” Pausing, she shot Charlie a stern glare. “Whenever possible, that is. If someone, say, runs over her brand-new laptop with her car, then it’s probably hopeless, and we won’t judge you for not being able to fix it. We will judge the person who ran over her brand-new laptop with her car, however. We will judge that person harshly.”
Norah appeared to be completely confused, but Charlie looked as guilty as Warrant when he was caught eating out of the garbage. Felicity’s expression, on the other hand, was one of pure triumph.
“I knew it!” Felicity crowed, slapping the table with her open palm. “I asked where your laptop was, and you did that mumble-mumble thing you always do when you’re trying to lie without really lying, and I knew you’d destroyed it somehow. Seriously, Charlie? You ran the poor thing over? Your innocent little laptop crushed? What is that? Your second new computer this year? Third?”
Charlie opened her mouth, but a heavy knock on the door interrupted her before she could defend herself. They all went still, their eyes wide as they looked around at each other. Even Warrant, who’d been napping under the table, using Cara’s foot as a pillow this time, stuck his head out but stayed quiet. At the next even louder knock, Molly shook herself out of her apprehensive paralysis and stood up. Her sisters followed her lead, and she snorted as she eyed them.
“Are we answering the door as a group?” she asked, leading the way to the front door. From the sound of the footsteps behind her, it seemed that the answer was yes. Privately, she didn’t mind the company. After everything that had happened with Jane, plus John Carmondy’s unexpected arrival early that morning, she didn’t mind having some backup—at least until their family’s luck changed for the better.
As she unlocked the front door and pulled it open, she squinted against the low-hanging sun that was perched right above the mountain peaks and peered at the pair standing on the porch. She bit back a curse when she saw the police T-shirts and the badges clipped to their belts. She had enough fingerprint powder all over her kitchen and garage from Sergeant Blake’s visit, thank you very much. Besides, she didn’t have the energy to deal with more cops today.
One of her sisters didn’t have her restraint. A low, drawn-out groan came from behind her—Felicity, if Molly wasn’t mistaken.
“Hello, Officers.” Molly plastered on a smile and flicked a glance at the logo on one of the men’s shirts. Denver Police. No wonder their faces weren’t familiar. She knew everyone at the Langston PD and the Gordon County Sheriff’s Office, at least by sight. “Are you here for some follow-up on my stolen car?”
“No, and it’s Detectives Mill”—he gestured toward his own chest—“and Bastien. We have a search warrant for this property,” the younger one said as the older cop—Bastien—silently and unsmilingly handed her the paperwork.
“Search warrant?” Her polite smile froze as she pulled out the warrant and scanned it, trying to push away her confusion and growing panic in order to take in the legalese. She knew she needed to focus so she could carefully check the areas the warrant allowed the cops to legally search and what items they were looking for.
“Give it here,” Cara said, plucking the paper from Molly’s hands. Once again relieved that her sisters were backing her up, Molly returned her attention to the detectives waiting not too patiently to get into the house.
“What’s all this about?” she asked. “Whatever our mom was arrested for this time, it can’t be major enough to require a search.” Except that auto theft’s pretty major, Molly thought. However, she knew that her car wasn’t hidden in her mom’s room.
“The judge disagrees,” Detective Mill snapped, and the two entered the house. Her mind whirling with thoughts about the best way to handle the situation, Molly stepped back out of their way.
Once they were in the living room, she was moving to close the door when she spotted three more vehicles pulling up in front of the house: two unmarked and one with DENVER CRIME SCENE UNIT printed on the side. The Villaneaus, a retired couple living across the street who were endlessly bitter that Molly’s family had the house with national park access instead of them, stepped outside and settled on their front-porch swing to watch the action.
“Great,” Molly muttered under her breath, and Felicity—the only one who hadn’t followed the first two cops deeper inside—met her gaze with a look of mutual dread. “This is going to be a huge mess.”
Felicity’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “It already is.”
Molly couldn’t argue with that.
Chapter 5
By the time the cops, detectives, and crime scene unit had made their significant mess and left, twilight had given way to full darkness. Molly paced the dining room, too anxious and furious to sit still, and glared at her cell phone.
“Just call him,” Charlie said for the tenth time, and Molly had to clench her teeth to keep from snapping something rude at her sister. “He’s the only one left.”
“I know.” Taking a deep breath, Molly forced herself to stand still. She’d tried all of their other contacts, but no one knew anything—or if they did, they wouldn’t share with her. This was their last possible source for information, and even this was a long shot. She just really didn’t want to call this number. As soon as she did, she’d be opening a huge, family-sized can of worms.
There wasn’t anyone else left to call, though, and they needed answers. After one more exhale that came out as a sigh, she tapped the number on her screen.
“What’s wrong, Pax?” John Carmondy answered immediately, so she didn’t even get a chance to prepare herself for hearing his bass voice.
“What’d she do?” It was rude to just blurt out the question. Molly knew that, but when was she ever polite to John? When you need
answers from him, a smugly know-it-all voice in the back of her head reminded her. She hated that voice.
There was a pause, and Molly wondered if John was just as startled by her call as she’d been by his. She almost immediately dismissed the notion, since she was pretty sure John Carmondy wasn’t taken off guard by anything. He could be neck-deep in swamp water with piranhas chewing on one leg and an alligator chomping on the other, and he’d still be as cool and calm as could be, cracking jokes and looking hot in a mud- and blood-smeared way.
Focus, she told herself sharply.
“I don’t know if she’s actually guilty,” he started, and Molly rolled her eyes. Of course Jane was guilty of whatever bad thing she was accused of doing. Molly couldn’t remember one time that her mom had been falsely accused. “But she was arrested for burglary and theft.”
“Okay,” Molly said slowly, processing the information. All four of her sisters were watching her with a silent, steady intensity, as if they were trying to hear the other side of the call, but Molly wasn’t about to put the phone on speaker. That would pretty much guarantee embarrassment on her part, since she’d never had a conversation with John that didn’t involve him teasing her about something. Even though he was unusually serious at the moment, she knew it was just a matter of time before he said something to make her squirm. Her sisters did not need any more ammunition when it came to giving her a hard time about him.
She forced her brain to focus again, but it was difficult. The hellish day had taken all of her energy, plus whatever she had in reserve. Her thoughts were spinning around uselessly, replaying all the worst parts of the past twenty-four hours. Meanwhile, her stomach twisted with the knowledge that what Jane had done was really, really bad.
Although it was true that burglary was on the more serious end of her mom’s usual crimes, that didn’t seem to explain the search warrant. Jane had incredibly quick and sticky fingers, and she’d been charged with theft before…many times. The attitude of the cops who’d just finished searching their house had been unusually serious and intense, though, and Molly could feel the difference between all of Jane’s earlier criminal exploits and this one. Whatever their mom had done, it was big.
“What did she steal?”
“What was she accused of stealing, do you mean?” John asked.
Molly frowned, unable to read his tone. Was he scolding her for not believing in her mom or warning her to keep up the pretense that Jane was innocent? Either way, she didn’t have time to try to parse the undercurrents of every word. “Sure. Let’s go with that. What was she accused of stealing?”
There it was again, that strange pause. John Carmondy was not normally hesitant. In fact, he was usually as not-hesitant as a person could possibly be. It was bizarre.
“Jewelry,” he finally said, which told her almost nothing but raised another thousand questions in her mind.
“Why are you being weird?” she burst out, not wanting to hear one more cautious, carefully worded answer from him. Her world was already topsy-turvy, and she didn’t need John acting strangely on top of everything else. He was always so rocklike, so confident and steady. No matter that she often found it annoying—she needed that John now.
“I’m not being weird,” he huffed, amusement threaded beneath his outrage, and she relaxed. That was more like the John Carmondy she knew and…didn’t really love. She was reassured by this small return to normal, though.
“Yes, you are.” She flipped her free hand impatiently. “Just tell me. What did Mom steal—besides my car? How big of a mess are my sisters and I in? We need to know, and your wishy-washy answers aren’t helping.”
Although he made a sound of protest when she called him wishy-washy, he didn’t waste time contradicting her, for which she was grateful.
“She was arrested for breaking into Simone Pichet’s hotel room and stealing a very valuable necklace.”
“Thank you.” Her words were sincere, since it was so nice having even that small bit of information. Moving the phone away from her mouth, she spoke to her sisters. “She stole Simone Pichet’s necklace.”
“Simone Pichet…isn’t she that famous sculptor?” Felicity asked, and Molly gave a short nod. Even she knew of Simone Pichet’s work, and Molly was fairly clueless when it came to art.
Norah immediately began tapping her laptop keys, and Molly felt a moment of gratitude that computers and electronic devices hadn’t been listed in the search warrant. One of the detectives had tried to take Norah’s laptop, but Cara had stopped him. If all of their computers and phones had been taken, everything would’ve been so much harder.
“Allegedly.” John stressed the word, and Molly put the phone back to her ear. “She allegedly stole Simone Pichet’s necklace.”
“Knock it off, Carmondy. She stole it. She has never been falsely accused. Not once in her life. I stopped giving her the benefit of the doubt when I was eight, and I don’t need you trying to make me feel guilty. All I need from you is information.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” He trailed off. When he spoke again, his voice was brisk and businesslike. “She pled innocent during her first advisement this afternoon.”
That new bit of information made Molly’s belly lurch with a whole new type of dread. “She had her first advisement hearing? Did the judge set bail?”
This time when he paused before speaking, she wanted to jump through the phone to rip the words out of him. “Yes. Five hundred.”
She blinked. “Five hundred? That’s it?”
“Thousand,” he clarified, and she froze in place. “Five hundred thousand.”
Molly’s lips were numb, but she somehow managed to ask, “Did she make bond?”
“Yes.” John didn’t sound happy.
A horrible thought occurred to her, making her stomach twist painfully. “Did you—”
“No!” There was no hesitation before his answer this time. “I wouldn’t do that. How could you think that I’d…?” He took a harsh, audible breath and then went quiet for a moment before speaking again, more calmly this time, although a hard edge remained to his voice. “It was Barney.”
She hadn’t believed things could get worse, but they suddenly had. “Barney Thompson?”
Her sisters, who’d been clustered around Norah, all trying to see her laptop screen, whipped around as one to stare at Molly. All she could do was stare back.
“This…is bad,” she finally said, and John barked out a humorless laugh.
“You could say that,” he said.
She didn’t say anything in response, her mind churning helplessly as she tried to think her way out of this horribly messy circus that Jane had dropped them into.
Finally, he asked, “What do you need from me?”
The question snapped her brain into sharp focus, even as the unexpected offer made a tiny part of her heart feel as tender as a bruise. “I’m not sure yet. Can I get back to you on that?”
“Anytime.”
“Thank you.” For the second time in a single conversation, she was thanking John Carmondy—and not sarcastically.
After she ended the call, she continued staring at her phone until Charlie demanded, “Well? What’d he say?”
Blinking, she looked at her sisters. “That was weird.”
“What was?” Cara asked.
“Carmondy was actually…nice.”
All four of her sisters exchanged amused looks.
“What?” Even as Molly asked, she knew she’d regret it.
Felicity snorted. “Please. He’s always nice to you. It’s ridiculous how nice that man is to you. You’re the only one who’s blind to it.”
Blind to what? This time, Molly knew better than to say the words out loud. Instead, she settled on a skeptical shake of her head and a subject change. “Mom’s out.”
“What? How?
” Cara’s forehead crinkled with confusion. “Who gave her the bail money? Did they sell your car already?”
Wincing at the thought of her beloved car sold to some shady dealer, Molly shook her head and cringed for an entirely different reason. “Barney wrote her bond.”
“What?” her sisters chorused, and Molly couldn’t blame them for their incredulity. After all, she’d been just as shocked. All but the most desperate avoided working with Barney. He was an untrustworthy shark who’d sell anyone out in a second if he’d make a dime off it. Her mother knew better than to jump into metaphorical bed with Barney—at least she should have. Molly rubbed her right eye, which was starting to twitch. Would the day’s bad surprises ever stop?
“Did John say what she used as collateral?” Cara asked.
Kicking herself for not thinking to ask, Molly shook her head. “I didn’t check. Sorry. I was thrown by the whole Barney thing.”
Charlie huffed out a laugh that held no amusement. “Understandable. I mean…Barney? What was she thinking?”
Unable to give her sisters a satisfactory answer, Molly could only shrug and change the subject. “What’d you find out about Simone What’s-Her-Face’s necklace?”
Turning her laptop so that Molly could see the screen, Norah made a pained face. “Mom went big this time.”
Bracing herself, Molly scanned the photo on the screen. She’d never been very interested in jewelry—even before she’d started chasing and tackling people on a regular basis—so the picture didn’t make too much of an impression on her. The necklace looked intricate and extremely sparkly, set mostly with what appeared to be diamonds, interspersed with blue stones. A large, clear gem dangled from the lowest point of the collar. Even she knew, based on that rock alone, that the necklace had to have an exorbitant price tag.
She scanned the description below the photo, and her lungs stopped working. “Twelve million?” she wheezed. “Mom stole a necklace worth twelve million dollars?”